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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Plane of the Day: The Mighty F-51 Hawken

The Hawken is based on the real-life F-15 Eagle

As I start this blog, I plan to do features on many of the planes (at least the ones that I am familiar with). It seems appropriate to start with what is probably the most popular plane in the game, the mighty F-51 Hawken. Modeled after the F-15 Eagle, this weapons class plane is a true brute. It is not the fastest plane out there but it sure as hell packs a punch. This plane is arguably the strongest weapons class plane in the fleet. Fast locking speeds, fast missile reloading, decent agility, high damage inflicting ratings. The Hawkens specialty is its fast missile reloading. With a Hawken, you will be able to fire off more missiles in a shorter amount of time than most of your adversaries. The only plane that can fire missiles faster (fully upgraded) is the FA-88 Hurricane (although the Hurricane packs quite a bit less damage). See PLANE COMPARISON TABLES for more detail.

The tech upgrades for this plane, as with all weapons class planes, are weapons, damage & armor related. See upgrade section of this manual for more detail.

If you have a fully upgraded Hawken, expect to obliterate lesser planes and lower skilled players fairly easily (much more easily than I can with my agility class Thresher). I usually only equip my Hawken with RAAM missiles (since I'm cheap and don't like spending money for missiles). With RAAM missiles, I can defeat most players with equal or lesser skills/planes although if I face another Hawken with Bisnovats, I'm usually toast, unless they aren't very skilled.

As for campaigns and survivor mode, the Hawken is my default plane for these modes due to its lethality and good armor. I do not have as much experience with defense class planes and believe that they may also be good for these modes. I'm saving up for an F-106 Arbiter but have a ways to go to get enough credits.

The Hawken goes for a cool 60,000 credits - probably the most expensive plane out there if you convert that to coins. This is the equivalent of about 700 coins! which is over $30 if you buy it without earning it (compared to most planes that go for 150 coins or less). Of course, the beauty of the game is that you don't have to pay a cent to get the Hawken if you are willing to put in the time, kick some tail and patiently build up your credits and experience.

If you want a great defense class get the raven or the dragon(featured plane) because it regenerates its health! Very useful for survival mode and campaign the raven is 145 blue coins and the dragon is 54000 credits. I own both and would say the dragon is better due to missle resist armor and 5% agility/mauever .-thank you for this great blog!!!

I have the hawken and saved for it in only 4 days. It's a great plane better than the eagle-x wich I also own wich was a very ceap plane. My skill as of now is over 7000 and I have 800 wins with a totall of 1200 games! Hey blogger (sorry I don't no ur name) what's ur game center?

Now that Z2 has released the Paladin (again), Sentinel, and the Helix, I think the Eagle and Hawken may become obsolete. Seeing as the Sentinel has a longer Range and an amazing +17 Damage, +14 Lock Range, +6 Agility, and +5 Armor, it outguns every plane. The Paladin is a reasonable opponent as its +10 Missile Reload rivals the Hawken and its +15 Cannon Damage, +11 Armor, and +8 Lock Speed make it a close contender if not a successor of the Hawken. Lastly we have the Helix which much like the Sentinel is a re-skinned Hawken. Where as the Hawken has +12 Damage, +10 Agility, +10 Missile Reload, and +5 Lock Speed, the Helix has +8 Missile Tracking (always scary), +12 Damage (seeing a pattern here), +12 Lock Range (That's new!), and +5 Lock Speed, the Helix is very close to the Hawken in some aspects and yet in a league of it's own in others. Overall, the Hawken has seen its Glory Days.

An easy way to get free blue coins WITHOUT cheating or hacking is to download Tapjoy if you have not already. Another great way to save credits is to cut your soendings on missiles and cannon and play versus mode over and over. Trust me, and by the way the last 3 comments is me not the fist comment!

Hawken is a great plane, almost a double class plane with its 10% agility stat, what, IMHO, let him overbalanced (there is no agility plane with such numbers of a weapons class feature).BTW nice blog!!Vini_Paschoal

Yes you should save up for the Hawken, the Liberty is also a great plane, I personally have both but use the Hawken more often, the Liberty just sits in my hangar since I bought my Hawken. Let's put it this way, I only have my Hawken armed with Sidewinders+Valkyrie and am currently winning %62+ of my matches and that includes some of the players in the top 100 on the Leaderboards.Liberty is fast but the Hawken is deadly!

Ian H Pedersen aka ThumperTwice

Current Skill Rating 7804 #3,882 out of 5,764,331 players globally on the LeaderboardsTotal games 1041Wins 652Total Versus Kills 1804 #4,572 out of 5,764,331 players globally on the Leaderboards

whoa!!i got disconnected from the servers and the next time i connected the hawken was for 20000 credits!!!!!i was saving up for that since a long time!!!also a new limited edition plane called the red widow is introduced.i think its the plane the vargas uses.

The F-15SE Silent Eagle only exists as a Mock-up ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_F-15SE_Silent_Eagle ). Since the Silent Eagle features Conformal Weapons Bays (CWB) and the Hawken airframe does not, the Hawken airframe is based on the F-15 Eagle or the F-15E Strike Eagle.

It seems the Hawken is based on the Strike eagle airframe, since the vertical fins of an original F-15 seem to be kind-of slim compared to the fins of a F-15E or Hawken. Can anybody proof this?

The F-15SE Silent Eagle only exists as a Mock-up ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_F-15SE_Silent_Eagle ). Since the Silent Eagle features Conformal Weapons Bays (CWB) and the Hawken airframe does not, the Hawken airframe is based on the F-15 Eagle or the F-15E Strike Eagle.

It seems the Hawken is based on the Strike eagle airframe, since the vertical fins of an original F-15 seem to be kind-of slim compared to the fins of a F-15E or Hawken. Can anybody proof this?

I know I will get booed for this and people will say I'm wrong, but the Hawken was a big disappointment to me. I haven't upgraded it yet and I know the upgrades are the things that make it great. I have about 250 coins and really want a sentinel. But really, I'm not wasting my coins to upgrade this. My suggestion to mid-level players with the amount of coins I have is to buy the sentinel.

Stick with your hawken. The sentinel doesn't have the hawken's agility or missile reload. I've been blown out of the sky with my fully upgraded paladin against an fully upgraded hawken (my friend's). The paladin fully upgraded has +11% armor. Stick with the hawken.

I didn't know where to put this so I put it here on your favorite plane. Metalstormforever, do you spend your coins on upgrading you planes? Because I noticed you only have about 6 or 7 coins and you should try this trick. Go to earn free coins and click on the one with the metalstormwingman icon. You should get 1 coin and it comes back in about 1 hour. This is how I earned my raven and bisnos! Kidding with the bisnos

I am 12 and i have both the hawken and the sentinel and the eagle xball fully upgraded The hawken is DEFINETELY my plane of choice. With a 5400 SR and RAAMs i usually kill everyone until a 10k SR limit. I have taken on Green Eagles nightwings other hawkens reapers annihilators red widows and pretty much everything else out there. And i feel like reporting the fact that i have a 78% win rating. Why? BECAUSE THE HAWKEN IS INDESTRUCTIBLE!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

i have a viper which is 30 coins,a tempest which was 1,000 credits,a annihilator which was also 1,000 credits,a d21 falcon which was 2,000 credits,a wartusk which was 2,000 credits,a arbiter which was 15,000 credits,and then the hawken which was 20,000 credits.so i spent 30 coins and 41,000 credits.

I played against someone in a Hawken today. He sustained basically continuous fire from my Reaper's standard- issue missiles and cannons, but displayed green-eagle-like damage resistance and didn't seem to want to die (Hawkens are not that tough, I've brought them down with standard-issues before with far less trouble than this). He also seemed a bit unhurried to avoid my attacks, and didn't send much fire my way. Suddenly, he just disappeared underground, and my kill meter went up by one, but I wasn't awarded any XP. Furthermore, his targeting blip appeared flying around underground, and I could lock onto him (but not hit him; my weapons stopped at ground level). I did win the match, but I'm still unsure if this was hacking or really bad lag.

I'm not a fan of this plane. The stats are impressive and great for campaign, but in vs mode they make it more of a bludgeoning-and-blinkered plane that requires no skill to use. The +10% Agility stat just lets this plane evade agility-class planes a bit better, and because of this I have had a lot of 0-0 ties with this plane.

Best plane? Nahh. Dragon beats it in the Defense class department, and skilled Thresher pilots trump all in Versus mode (unless, of course, there are Bisnos or Lancers involved, in which case whoever carries them wins unless there's no lag at all).

At this point, I'm getting a bit fed up with Z2's antics. Hawkens are a pain in the rear to fight, but I usually try anyway. However, if any plane with Bisnos or Lancers shows up as my next opponent, I surrender immediately and go off to find someone who wants to play fair. Call me a noob all you want, but it is just so not worth my time to fly around and get blown up for two and a half minutes. Maybe I'd feel differently if the game had a reasonable server speed, but the ridiculous lag just makes it basically impossible to evade Bisnos and Lancers. Now that I have an upgraded Thresher, evading things like Credit missiles and Meteors and Vympels has become actually possible, so I have a reason to keep playing the game. I realize bisnos and lancers will never be removed because of the amazing amount of unskilled and desperate pilots in the game willing to pay for them, but until the lag is fixed, I will never play a match against someone with those idiotic missiles.

NO KIDDING!! I use RAAMs and hate all those NOOBS wih bisnos!! Although i actually fight them because most of the People that use them suck ( low sr/inexperienced) they are big PAINS I wish that Z2 would turn that stuff off

Kicked the ass of some hawken with bisnos and zeus with skill rate 4k with f113 eagle 10-3, I like eagle more, telling you. although Iron fang is my default plane for versus, I used eagle and killed that darn hawken. I used pheonixes ang Vulcan, by the way. It is either: the guy sucks although he is 4k, the hawken sucks, he didnt upgrade his plane, or i am damn good. My skill is 2k.

The Hawken doesn't cost 60,000 credits, if it did i woudn't have it it costs 20,000 credits.I think the Sky Demon is the best Weapon plane, there isn't a plane yet that tops all the others but the Sky Demon is the best Weapon plane to have. After that is the FA-230 Sentienal ect. The best plane for choice since most people aren't at level 50 yet would be the FA-230 Sentinal would be the best weapon plane for Vs, Survivor, and Campaign mode to.My name is my game center name. The hawken is a good plane after you fully upgrade it. Doubt many of you can fully upgrade it same with sentinel. ignore the () in my name that6s not apart of it.

The only decent plane is the F-51 Hawken. I keep getting tricked into thinking there is something better. I waste the money buying it and upgrading it only to reaslize it is crap and going back. I will not buy another plane. F-51 Hawken forever.

I own Hawken and beat dragon green eagle raven f113 eagle threasher reaper iron fang and obviously the f*cking widow. PLUS YOU ARE SO FULL OF YOURSELF. THAT EPIC HAWKEN IS UNUPGRADED SR4000 ISH for 200 games,friend me and beat me IF YOU CAN, Timekill9

you guys think hawken sucks because a lot of noobs fly it. in the hands of an ace, it is virtually unbeatable. take a look at shivams videos on youtube, all the pilots he faced are agility aces, but he is able to beat them by a large margin using hawken and stock missile. you think agility owns, but if a weapons ace knows how to no lock, agility pilots are toast. weapon class is therefore the best class but also the most difficult to master.